E.J. Graff

E.J. Graff writes on social-justice and human-rights issues, particularly discrimination and violence against women and children; marriage and family policy; and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender lives. She is a resident scholar at the Brandeis Women's Studies Research Center and the author of What Is Marriage For? The Strange Social History of Our Most Intimate Institution (Beacon Press, 1999, 2004).

Recent Articles

Unless you live in Massachusetts—or maybe even if you do—you probably missed the Elizabeth Warren/Scott Brown debate last night. That’s too bad, because it was a kick-ass debate—a model for political debates—run by Jim Madigan, from Springfield, Massachusetts’s public television station. (I know, I know—like Big Bird, he has to be careful, lest Romney fire him.) Here’s the truly groundbreaking part: Madigan actually moderated. He asked substantive questions about policy, drawn from those voters sent in. He kept the candidates to strict time schedules, giving them 20 seconds here and 5 seconds there, forcing them to articulate their beliefs quickly and crisply. He actually cut Brown off mid-sentence as Brown meandered around one point. Imagine that! As the debate went on, they started speed-talking to beat the clock. There was no time for Scott Brown to hurl his ludicrous accusations about Warren’s ancestry, although he did go ad hominem as often as he could. But we actually heard...

Last week, I launched a series simultaneously attacking and hijacking the quadrennial question: Are you better off than you were four years ago? For the first one, I reported on how women are doing economically compared to four years ago. But one of my sentences confused readers—apparently because I myself was confused. For my correction, let me simply quote what Heidi Hartmann of IWPR, one of the labor economists I cited, wrote me: I do have a little trouble with this sentence though because I’m not sure what you were trying to get at. If I said something like this I was not very accurate: Elderly women have fared a little better, because older people who live on Social Security haven’t lost much. They weren’t as affected by the drop in housing prices or the evaporation of pensions, since they hadn’t had jobs to begin with. It might be better to phrase it slightly differently: Elderly women have fared a little better, because older people who live on Social Security haven’t lost...

Just in case the Boy Scouts hadn't hurt their reputation enough, they just told a longtime Boy Scout in California that he can't be an Eagle Scout—because he came out as gay, according to Yahoo. Yes, it's stupid to screen out adult gay men as Scoutmasters, but at least you could assume that, once upon a time, the Boy Scouts did that because they genuinely (if mistakenly) confused gay men with pedophiles. If all you hear in "homosexuality" is the "sexuality" part, and if you want to protect boys from predators, that mistake can be explained. The problem, of course, is that by looking for predators in the wrong group, the Boy Scouts let the real molesters slip back in again and again. But the only heart you break, there, is that of an adult who can get a little perspective. It's nasty, too, to tell a stay-at-home mom that she can't be the den mother of her son's Cub Scout pack because she's a lesbian—even though the other parents drafted her for the volunteer spot. But at least Jennifer...

Like so many people—most, I would argue—I don’t so much listen to the presidential debates as watch them. As the words drone on in the background, I watch how they stand, where they look, what they emphasize. You’ve already read Bob Moser’s and Robert Kuttner’s detailed critiques of the President’s debate performance, and you don’t need my echo. But what I saw last night—whether accurately or not—was this: An exhausted President Obama isn’t completely sure he still wants the job. I’m not saying that is true; I am saying that that’s how he looked. Sure, he might have been preoccupied with the fact that, yesterday, Turkey made a preliminary foray into war with Syria—the man does have a demanding day job—but my fellow spectators on Twitter were crazed as Obama failed to make the case for his continued presidency. Someone tweeted, “Does Canada make you self-deport? Asking for a friend.” Others urged Team Obama to send Bill Clinton in as his designated hitter for the next two debates,...

Last week I confessed that I don’t like presidential election season. I don’t like the trivialized reportage, the horse-race-ification of serious subjects, and the narrowed vision that settles in on policy folks during these months. I especially don’t like the question “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” This suggests two things to which I object: first, that the president is in charge of how well-off I am, when all of us know that American politics and global economics are far more complex. Second, that “better off” or “worse off” can be reduced to my current income and immediate financial prospects, even if those were dependent on the president. So I’m going to hijack that question for my own purposes and ask: Are women better off than we were four years ago—not just financially, and not just in ways affected by President Barack Obama’s administration, but overall? Episode one: Show me the money. Despite the fact that I dislike the reduction of life to finances,...